Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

Dragon Warriors



A small but well-established warband of renegade Astartes, the Dragon Warriors are known for their terrifying skill at close-range firefights. The sight of a Dragon Warrior's flame-red armour is often the last thing an unfortunate enemy will witness before their vision erupts into an inferno of promethium and warpfire. Though sometimes found acting as a mercenary vanguard for a greater Chaos incursion, patterns established by Imperial observers suggest that the Dragon Warriors most often target specific installations and convoys in search of relics, sealed lore, or unsanctioned psykers, the latter for sacrifice or recruitment. Such prizes frequently bring these traitors into direct conflict with the Inquisition, but the Dragon Warriors have earned another, far more bitter foe within the Imperium: the Salamanders Chapter of the First Founding.

This rivalry is unsurprising, for the Dragon Warriors' core membership is drawn almost exclusively from subverted Salamanders and those few Chapters thought to be their successors, including the Black Dragons, Basilisks, and Storm Giants. Such uniform recruitment is a baffling anomaly, causing some within the Ordo Hereticus to speculate that a common tenet of the Salamanders' Chapter Cult might be at the root. They do so quietly, for the Salamanders are among the most respected of the Imperium's defenders, but they are not far from the truth. The Dragon Warriors began with Chaplain Ushorak of the Black Dragons, who saw the changes wrought on his brothers by their mutant Ossmodula as a blessing, a gift that would allow them to transcend as far beyond the Astartes as the Astartes were from humanity. Banished from the Chapter for his extreme views, Ushorak came to reinterpret the Promethean philosophy as an edict to reforge humanity itself, testing it in fire until its weaknesses and limitations were wholly cleansed.

Taking on the name of the Legion that had preceded the Salamanders, Ushorak rebranded himself The Dragon Warrior, clad in flame-red armour marked with fine ceramite scales, its trim a glossy near-black green. His words attracted many among his former Chapter, as well as other extremists in the Promethean Cult, and under happier circumstances the Dragon Warriors might have eventually been legitimized in a Special Founding to resolve the doctrinal dispute. Alas, it had become clear to Ushorak that Chaos was the perfect forge in which to test mortal mettle. Reports reached the Imperium of vile evolutionary furnaces, of Promethean rituals perverted by warpfire, and of possessed Astartes shedding their mortal impurities, and the Dragon Warriors were branded Excommunicate Traitoris.

Though Ushorak himself is dead, burned alive by the Salamanders in the pits of Moribar, his work continues, and his successor has only led the Dragon Warriors to more destructive extremes. A former Salamanders Librarian, the Sorcerer Nihilan led an attack on Nocturne itself not two decades ago, using daemonic allies and alien mercenaries to penetrate the most sacred vaults of the Salamanders. The full scope of what he sought is unknown, but his powers of transformation and resurrection grow with every appearance in the field. The Dragon Warriors now field possessed Dragon Claws that fight like a whirlwind of shifting bone and fiery screams, alongside whole squads of resurrected Promethean Marines whose burning spirits ignite their bolter shells and hollow armour alike. Nihilan's works are a foul perversion of the Promethean philosophy, one that he believes will save the galaxy, and that his former brothers regard as a blasphemy without compare.

Renegade Trait

Fires of Conflict
The Dragon Warriors specialize in close-range firefights, bathing in the flames of battle. Thus shall the cosmos be reborn, purified of all that was weak.

A unit with this trait can fire Assault and Grenade weapons while it is within 1" of the enemy. If it does so, it must target the closest enemy unit, even if friendly units are within 1" of that unit. A model that does so cannot attack in the Fight phase for that turn. In addition, when a unit with this trait shoots an enemy unit that is within 8", the Armour Penetration characteristic of that weapon's attack is improved by 1 (i.e. an Armour Penetration characteristic of '0' becomes '-1', etc).

Warlord Trait

Dragon's Breath
This warlord keeps a cruel grip on the capricious fires of Chaos, lest they some day consume him.

You can roll an additional dice and discard the lowest result when determining the number of attacks made by a model in a friendly DRAGON WARRIORS or DAEMON unit within 6" of your Warlord (e.g. a Chaos Spawn or a model firing a flamer). If the lowest and highest result are the same, add 1 to the Strength characteristic of those attacks.

Stratagem

From the Ashes (2 CP)
Igniting the battlefield, the Dragon Warriors advance under cover of smoke and burning flesh.

Use this Stratagem in your Movement phase. Pick any number of DRAGON WARRIORS INFANTRY units within 3" of a single terrain feature. Until the start of your next turn, that terrain feature does not provide the benefits of cover, and your opponent must subtract 1 from any hit rolls while shooting at the units you picked.

Artefact Of Chaos

Tome Of Balefire
A copy of the legendary Tome Of Fire, stolen from the depths of Nocturne itself and annotated with burning truths by the Sorcerer Nihilan.

DRAGON WARRIORS PSYKER only. At the start of any battle round, the bearer can stoke the fires of the warp. Until the end of that round, when any unit within 18" of the bearer rolls one or more dice in the Psychic phase, it treats a dice roll of 1 as a dice roll of 6. This can cause Perils of the Warp.

Automatically Appended Next Post:
Summation: I have yet to read Nick Kyme's Salamanders books, but I liked the Dragon Warriors from the moment they showed up in 4e, and I always thought they'd make for a cool Tzeentch warband what with the ouroborous-dragon and the flame motif. I like Chaos worshippers that don't just look and act like a clone of the appropriate Traitor Legion, and a focus on flame and rebirth seemed a good way to get at that. So I've appropriated what background material I could from the wiki, but otherwise it's all made up; I'm not hugely bothered if there are inaccuracies compared to the books.

In mechanical terms, I wanted to represent a warband that focused on close-range firefights, and also do what the Vigilus Renegades largely didn't: encourage the Dragon Warriors to actually fight as a Tzeentch warband. They even have an excuse to field their own Rubric Marines! Weird Chaos rituals fuelled by pseudo-Perpetual fire magic are a hell of a drug, y'all.

The Renegade Trait has two parts.

First, it gives Dragon Warriors the Solar Fury code from the Necrons... but at only 8" away, rather than "half range". In other words, it's a boost for flamers and flamer-adjacent models.

Second, it lets Dragon Warriors fire those flamers in melee, in exchange for not attacking. On a vanilla Chaos Marine, you're trading 2-3 S4 attacks for a single meltagun or flamer shot; which is good, but not OP. It's mainly there so that you don't have to worry too much about getting close to an assault army and getting only one flamer shot off before they charge in. Now you can flame all day!

The Warlord Trait is pretty straightforward: it's another flamer boost, a version of the Catachan's Burn Them Out order that doesn't allow you to roll worse on the "re-roll". It also helps out Possessed a bit, which a) god knows they need, and b) makes for a neat Dragon Claws conversion. It also expands your Death to the False Emperor against Salamanders, which is just a fluffy ribbon rather than an actual benefit.

The Stratagem is a tool to get your flamers into close range without being shot to pieces by a shooty army. Compared to the Night Lords or Speed Freeks equivalent, it costs an extra CP and requires you to start near a piece of cover... but it can affect multiple units if you're clever about it (and you should be), allowing you to start in cover, burn it like Cortez burning his ships, and Advance full speed toward the enemy under a -1 to hit smokescreen. If you're really clever, you can also use it when assaulting enemies in cover: get within 3", trigger the Stratagem, and you can ignore cover when firing at the bunkered-up targets, and also get that tasty -1 to hit if he has any pistols in his Shooting phase (or if you'd rather not charge).

Lastly, the Artefact of Chaos is a weird one. Originally it was a close-range Smite boost, but this was more fun and unique; when you use it, you're boosting the average psychic roll for any psyker within 18" from 7 to 8.3... but you're also doubling the odds of a Perils attack. The same goes for your opponent; are you going to make his head blow up, or just boost his psykers? The primary use, of course, is to double the chances of triggering an Icon of Fire, and your Horrors couldn't care less about the extra Perils chance. See? Reasons to play them as Tzeentch.

Cool stuff! Flavorful, and doesn't seem likely to break anything. A few thoughts:

* While Tzeentch is probably the best fit for them of all the chaos gods, they're not depicted as being especially Tzeentchy in the novels.

* The warlord trait is slightly unclear and perhaps a bit too complicated. Does it work on "Attacks" as in the number of attacks made in the fight phase by a short list of units, on weapons that fire a random number of shots like flamers and plasma cannons, or both? Also, I don't know Tzeentch stuff well enough to be sure, but does this risk becoming too good on Tzeentch daemons of some variety? Does it encourage soul grinder spam, for instance? Does it power up flamers of tzeentch too much?

* From the Ashes; you can probably simplify it by swapping the, "were within 3" of the terrain feature when you used this Stratagem," part with a simple, "within 3" of the terrain feature." Terrain features are generally sizable, and you'll probably still be pretty close to it during your opponent's turn (barring Warp Time or a charge towards a relatively distant unit). Tracking which units were and weren't within 3" of it just seems like slightly unnecessary bookkeeping, but I like it overall.

But yeah. Fluffy stuff. I like it.

Wyldhunt wrote:
* While Tzeentch is probably the best fit for them of all the chaos gods, they're not depicted as being especially Tzeentchy in the novels.

Yeah, that doesn't surprise me; as I said, I haven't read the novels! I've taken names and events from the wiki, but everything else is purely my invention, based on what was in my head before I found out they were in the novels. Hopefully I'll get to read them at some point.

Wyldhunt wrote:
* The warlord trait is slightly unclear and perhaps a bit too complicated. Does it work on "Attacks" as in the number of attacks made in the fight phase by a short list of units, on weapons that fire a random number of shots like flamers and plasma cannons, or both? Also, I don't know Tzeentch stuff well enough to be sure, but does this risk becoming too good on Tzeentch daemons of some variety? Does it encourage soul grinder spam, for instance? Does it power up flamers of tzeentch too much?

The wording's straight from the Catachan order, but yeah; it's meant to affect both shots and attacks. Flamers, Plasma Cannons, Possessed, Chaos Spawn, etc. Would you recommend I rephrase it for clarity? I wouldn't say so on the daemon stuff; Soul Grinders have a 36" battle cannon, so at most you're getting less than one extra shot per grinder. This trait is best when it affects as many different weapons as possible, i.e. lots of flamers at once, and for the most part it's going to make them more reliable, not more powerful; the +1S only triggers as a consolation prize on the 1/36 chance that the trait has no effect.

Wyldhunt wrote:
* From the Ashes; you can probably simplify it by swapping the, "were within 3" of the terrain feature when you used this Stratagem," part with a simple, "within 3" of the terrain feature." Terrain features are generally sizable, and you'll probably still be pretty close to it during your opponent's turn (barring Warp Time or a charge towards a relatively distant unit). Tracking which units were and weren't within 3" of it just seems like slightly unnecessary bookkeeping, but I like it overall.

Remember that you use the Stratagem in your Movement phase, not at the end of it. You can start your turn with one unit within 3", move another unit within 3", use the Stratagem, then move the first unit out of range, and it'll still benefit both units regardless. That's really how it's meant to be used; start in cover, use the Stratagem, then abandon cover to move forward under smokescreen.

Thank you for your feedback! I really appreciate it.

RevlidRas wrote:
The wording's straight from the Catachan order, but yeah; it's meant to affect both shots and attacks. Flamers, Plasma Cannons, Possessed, Chaos Spawn, etc. Would you recommend I rephrase it for clarity?

Probably, yeah. Keeping rules concise is great, but I imagine a lot of people reading that one might have the same questions I did.

I wouldn't say so on the daemon stuff; Soul Grinders have a 36" battle cannon, so at most you're getting less than one extra shot per grinder. This trait is best when it affects as many different weapons as possible, i.e. lots of flamers at once

Fair enough. I really don't know the current daemon rules very well.

and for the most part it's going to make them more reliable, not more powerful; the +1S only triggers as a consolation prize on the 1/36 chance that the trait has no effect.

1 in 6 chance as it's currently worded. Regardless of what you roll on the first d6, you'll have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling the same thing on the second d6.

Remember that you use the Stratagem in your Movement phase, not at the end of it. You can start your turn with one unit within 3", move another unit within 3", use the Stratagem, then move the first unit out of range, and it'll still benefit both units regardless. That's really how it's meant to be used; start in cover, use the Stratagem, then abandon cover to move forward under smokescreen.

That's probably fine. You basically just have to pause to do some measuring and then toss some tokens onto the impacted units. If measuring proves too cumbersome, you could probably change it to only affect units that are actually on the terrain at the time you use the strat.

Thank you for your feedback! I really appreciate it.

Thanks for taking the time to write up and share some cool rules!

Wyldhunt wrote:
Probably, yeah. Keeping rules concise is great, but I imagine a lot of people reading that one might have the same questions I did.

Alright, rephrased. Hopefully that, and the addition of examples, will clear things up.

Wyldhunt wrote:
1 in 6 chance as it's currently worded. Regardless of what you roll on the first d6, you'll have a 1 in 6 chance of rolling the same thing on the second d6.

Whoops! You're right. "Any double" is 6/36, while a specific double is 1/36. Well, the principle stands; it never does nothing, which I think is important.

Wyldhunt wrote:
That's probably fine. You basically just have to pause to do some measuring and then toss some tokens onto the impacted units. If measuring proves too cumbersome, you could probably change it to only affect units that are actually on the terrain at the time you use the strat.

That's not a bad idea. I've tried rephrasing the Stratagem to be more elegantly worded, but it's tricky because there are so many moving parts. It's basically Smoke Launchers on every unit within 3" of a piece of terrain, and that piece of terrain doesn't provide cover for the duration of the smoke launchers (which is important to avoid stacking cover; it's an assault Stratagem, not a gunline one). How does this work as an alternative phrasing?

"Use this Stratagem in your Movement phase. Pick a terrain feature that is within 3" of a DRAGON WARRIORS unit from your army. Until the start of your next turn, that terrain feature does not provide the benefits of cover. In addition, pick any number of DRAGON WARRIORS units that are currently within 3" of that terrain feature. Until the start of your next turn, subtract 1 from hit rolls for attacks made by ranged weapons that target these units."

***

Also worth noting; a friend pointed out that swapping a 3 for a 6 might boost the average, but in practice it's a +2/36 chance to cast Smite or a +5/36 chance to cast Prescience, which is small comfort in exchange for Perils. With that in mind, I've changed it so that a 1 turns into a 6, instead; less fluffy, but you're still boosting your Perils chances (albeit to 11% rather than 14%), Icons and Horrors get the exact same benefit, and it's a meatier boost for actual psychic rolls. Do you think it was fine before? Is this too much?

This is the kind of stuff I always want to see from the Proposed Rules section but very rarely do. Very nice!

Wondering if it might be faster/easier to write "may fire weapons with the Assault type as if they had the Pistol type...) into the Renegade Trait? I'm also not sure why they need to have their ability to fight in combat taken away afterwards; the number of weapons the trait applies to is already pretty small and that just takes the only case I can think of where it would be really cool (Terminators with combi-flamers/combi-meltas) and makes it too much of a trade-off to actually use.

Alternately if the entire goal of that section of the rule is to give them the ability to keep firing flamers you could just put hand flamers in as an option?

I think Fires of Conflict would be fine even if it allowed the models to fight in the subsequent fight phase.

Great rules! Shockingly well-balanced, for fan-made content.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Wondering if it might be faster/easier to write "may fire weapons with the Assault type as if they had the Pistol type...) into the Renegade Trait?

This was actually the initial phrasing I used, yes! Unfortunately, it raised its own problems. First, you can shoot all your Pistols each shooting phase, so I had to specify that you couldn't shoot your bolt/plasma pistols at the same time as your flamer or grenades. Second, I included grenades to ensure that every DW unit benefited, not just those armed with flamers/meltas; but changing the type to Pistol meant I had to go back in and add the "only one model per unit" restriction for Grenades-turned-Pistols. In the end, it turned out to be just as cumbersome as directly copying the benefits of the Pistol type.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
I'm also not sure why they need to have their ability to fight in combat taken away afterwards; the number of weapons the trait applies to is already pretty small and that just takes the only case I can think of where it would be really cool (Terminators with combi-flamers/combi-meltas) and makes it too much of a trade-off to actually use.

My main concern was how the trait matched up against its other close-range peers. The World Eaters get +1A per model on the charge, and the Flawless Host get +16%A overall every round (before mods).

Now, the addition of Heavy Flamers was more of a shrugging "why is this not already here" moment, so I'm ignoring that for balance purposes, but the boosted AP isn't that much worse than an equivalent Dynastic Code (Solar Fury) in its entirety. It's much worse for long range weapons or even bolters, obviously, and deliberately screws over Deep Strikers left just out of its active range, but it actually works better for extreme short-range weapons like flamers and meltas. So the ability to fire those very weapons in combat is intended as a way to massage your need to get so close in order to use your gimmick at all, rather than a beastly melee trait.

Setting aside the boosted AP for a moment, a flamer hit is basically the same as a bolt pistol or melee hit, each of which triggers on 66%. So if you combine the results of the Shooting and Fight phases, a vanilla marine in melee will turn out 1.3 S4 hits with a boltgun, or 2 S4 hits with a chainsword. A marine with a flamer can't have a chainsword, so that's 1.3 S4 hits per turn... but a Dragon Warrior can fire a flamer and turn out 3.5 S4 hits instead. A boost of over 150%!

So a unit of 10 vanilla marines with two flamers will turn out 10 bolt pistol shots and 10-18 melee attacks, amounting to 13-18 S4 hits. As World Eaters on the charge, they'll get an extra +10 attacks, for 20-26 hits. As Flawless Host with no mods, they'll get an extra 16% attacks, for 15-21 hits. As Dragon Warriors with a shooting phase, they'll trade 2 shots and 2 attacks for 2D6 hits, for a total of 17-23 hits. That's going to be a lot less common than the other two - it only works on the second or third round of combat, because if you charge you'll fire first and if your enemy charges you'll fire overwatch - but it's easily comparable to a proper melee trait, and it comes with an AP boost that works just as well outside combat.

Now, if they get to attack as well, those numbers move to 19-25 hits, which is World Eater-on-the-charge territory. Higher, if you factor in a Champion, who can take a combi-flamer and attack twice. That's not really acceptable for a close-range-firefight trait.

And it only gets worse on Elite troops with Assault weapons; I deliberately avoided calling out "flame" weapons like Salamanders do because Chaos Space Marines have so many pseudo-flame weapons, but consider what this trait does for Noise Marines, who are absolutely not intended to be the best option for the semi-Tzeentchian Dragon Warriors. With the restriction in place, they get basically the same combat performance with an extra -1 AP and a nastier Champion. Without it, they'd go from 3 S4 attacks to 5, which is busted. Eliminating attacks for these models means you're encouraged to play at short-range firefights with low-Attack units like Rubrics (who become absolute hell to charge; all warpflamers fire on overwatch, then fire again next turn?) rather than actively charging in.

Meltaguns in combat are, similarly, really good. Getting tangled up with vehicles is no longer a losing prospect, because you can basically read "you can fire meltaguns in combat instead of fighting" as "any model with a meltagun trades its bolt pistol and attack for a free powerfist with no -1 to hit and better damage". That's horrifying, even before you throw your free krak grenade.

The main downside is the impact on non-aligned elite troops with 2+ attacks like Chosen and Terminators. Especially Terminators, who (as you note) are effectively forced to pay for a chainaxe they'll never use, and don't benefit from your Renegade trait on a deep strike. That alone might be an argument to boost the range... but that said, Termies don't get pistols to begin with, so combi-flamer Termies still go from 1.3 S5 AP-1 hits each to 3.5 S4 AP-1 hits each. A boost against basically anything. Chosen suffer the most, thanks to 2 attacks, free chainswords, and pistols... but you can build around it somewhat, and it still works out, just not as well.

 AnomanderRake wrote:
Alternately if the entire goal of that section of the rule is to give them the ability to keep firing flamers you could just put hand flamers in as an option?

Main reason to avoid this is to avoid special snowflake wargear lists and modelling requirements... which means I ought to remove the heavy flamer, honestly.

Thank you for being honest with your feedback; it helps to lay out my thoughts, and I hope I made sense?